Chasing Ghosts

by Nicola Pierce

  I picked up my paintbrush and readied myself, feeling awed by my own ambition. All I understood was that I would place Weesy in the garden to demonstrate that she could still be around but at a distance.

  Moments passed and I was petrified, my hand holding the brush still hanging in mid-air as I struggled to even choose a colour. Should I start with the thick brown strands of her hair or smoky clouds lazing across a blue sky? What about the delicacy of blush on her cheeks and lips? Or the bold patterns of her dress that I liked? And, well, what colour exactly were her eyes again? And freckles, how many? Also, did her fingernails shine?

  On I sat, searching for greatness in the white of my page.

  Just then, the door was flung open. Sarah hiccupped loudly as she strode in, followed closely by William who was pretending to stop her. ‘Oh, no, Sarah, we are not allowed in here. This is Ann’s room!’

  With that, he looked at me hopefully. Hiding my relief at this interruption, I pretended to sigh as I said, ‘Oh, all right, then, you can stay but do not knock anything over.’

  Sarah stumbled over to my desk. ‘Me see, me see!’

  ‘Well, I am only just starting. There is nothing to see yet.’

  ‘Me paint!’

  ‘I want to paint too,’ said William.

  ‘Really?’ I tutted. ‘Honestly, I can never get a moment’s peace.’

  Sarah giggled, knowing full well that I was going to give in to them. There was just about room for the three of us to work side by side.

  ‘Now, you can each have a sheet of paper but promise not to get paint on your clothes or on the furniture. Do you hear me?’

  As I spoke, I fetched a second chair and sat Sarah onto it. William was happy to stand. Sarah was too busy reaching for a brush to pay me any heed so I looked at William who shrugged, ‘We know!’

  And just like that they started painting. I moved the vase of water to the centre of the desk. ‘Now, Sarah, you must wash your brush when you want to use a different colour.’

  ‘Green!’

  William explained, ‘Today, her favourite colour is green.’

  They did not worry about making the most perfect and meaningful mark on their sheets. Sarah began to hum to herself as she pressed her brush down, creating different-sized splodges that made her smile. Meanwhile, William ran his brush over the top of his page, watching it leave a trail of blue in its wake. So, after a moment, I took up my paintbrush, dabbed it in Sarah’s favourite colour for today and began.

  Notes from the Author

  Captain Francis Leopold McClintock and the Victory Point Note

  Between 1847 and 1859, over thirty ships were sent out in search of Franklin’s men. As the years passed, it was merely hoped to find a clue that would help to explain their disappearance. After the Navy lost interest, due in part to the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853, Lady Franklin used family money to fund her own searches. In 1857, she bought the 177-ton, schooner-rigged steam yacht, the Fox, and chose Dundalk-man Francis Leopold McClintock to take command, instructing him to search for ‘the unspeakably precious documents of the expedition’. She had chosen well.

  According to Frank Nugent, author of Seek the Frozen Land, Captain McClintock was one of Ireland’s greatest Arctic explorers. He developed the proper use of sledges to enable naval expeditions to travel further abroad from a ship beset in the ice, in order to survey and explore a larger amount of territory.

  Captain McClintock was told to look for survivors which, of course, would have been a miracle by this stage. Unlike the Franklin crew, seventeen of his twenty-six crewmen were already experienced in searching the Arctic for Erebus and Terror.

  An unfortunate start saw the Fox spending the winter of 1857 adrift in ice and making it necessary to return to Greenland for fresh supplies and dogs that would be used to pull their sledges. They reached Beechey Island early in 1858 and, from there, sailed to a point near Bellot Strait, from where they embarked upon a series of explorations using sledges. As well as searching for anything to do with Franklin’s expedition, McClintock was also determined to chart the remaining gaps on his Arctic map.

  On reaching King William’s Island, McClintock dog-sledged the northern end of the island, whilst his second-in-command, Lieutenant William Hobson, investigated the south end. Captain McClintock had his first piece of good luck when he encountered an Inuit snow village hoarding real treasure. Using sewing needles for currency, McClintock ‘bought’ cutlery and delph belonging to John Franklin, Francis Crozier and Alexander McDonald. He also acquired uniforms and tunic buttons. Furthermore, an Inuit woman told him about seeing a large group of white men who fell down (died) as they walked, adding that some were buried and some were not.

  A couple of days later, he found a skeleton, face down in the snow, wearing the tattered uniform of an officer’s servant or steward.

  On 29 May 1859, Captain McClintock reached the western extreme of King William Island and named it Cape Crozier in honour of Banbridge man Captain Francis Crozier. One of the lifeboats had been discovered and McClintock marvelled at the enormity of the task for the Franklin crew to push and pull this boat over ice and snow. Two skeletons were found in the boat, but perhaps the most striking realisation was the amount and variety of unnecessary possessions that were carried in the boat: boots, clothes, towels, soap, toothbrush, combs, silk handkerchiefs, tobacco, twine, nails, a saw, ammunition, watches, novels, Bibles, lots of silverware and delph, including eight plates bearing John Franklin’s family crest, along with forty pounds of chocolate. McClintock described this stuff as being nothing more than ‘dead weight … and very likely to break down the strength of the sledge crews.’

  Elsewhere, stoves were found along with a medicine cabinet and writing desk. It was as if the men had attempted to carry their very civilisation – their Bibles and plates and cutlery etc – in the face of the most uncivil environment and climate.

  Meanwhile, his second-in-command, Lieutenant William Hobson, finally struck gold. From the cairn at Victory Point, he retrieved the only official document ever found from Franklin’s expedition, an eleven-year-old piece of paper recording the commander’s death, along with many others, and informing the reader that Terror and Erebus had been abandoned on 22 April 1848 – with Captain Crozier’s final scribble about heading for the Great Fish River.

  One can only imagine the feelings experienced by Lady Franklin on receiving McClintock’s news. It was probably as much a relief as a dreadful shock finally to learn a little of what had happened to her husband and his men.

  She and her niece Sophie never gave up searching for more information and were convinced that her husband’s journals would be found at some stage. Sophie and her seventy-eight year-old aunt finally made a trip to the Arctic, reaching Alaska in 1870, where they bought some souvenirs. Four years later, Lady Jane Franklin was still offering a handsome reward to anyone who could find any letters, journals or notebooks from Terror and Erebus.

  When she died in July 1875, Captain McClintock helped carry her coffin. Her last act for her husband finally bore fruit two weeks after her death when a bust of Sir John, which she had tirelessly campaigned for, was unveiled in Westminster Abbey.

  She died, a celebrity in her own right, widely admired for her loyalty and fearlessness regarding her determination to know the true fate of her husband.

  The Two Ships Found

  HMS Erebus was finally found in September 2014, in the south of King William Island, eleven metres below water, sitting up straight on the seabed and covered in kelp seaweed. The cold Arctic water had preserved the ship, although there were holes in the deck that allowed divers a peek inside. The leg of a table could be seen in Captain Franklin’s cabin. Two brass six-pounder guns were also found along with the ship’s bell, which was imprinted with the British government’s broad-arrow mark and the year, 1845, when the two ships sailed from Greenhithe, England.

  Two years later, in September 2016, HMS Terror was found further north in Te
rror Bay (so named in 1910 by the Geographical Names Board in Canada) in forty-eight metres of water and in even better shape than Erebus. Some of the glass panels in the windows of Captain Crozier’s cabin were still perfectly intact.

  Like Lady Jane Franklin, researchers and archaeologists hope to find written documents that might have been packed safely away into containers and, therefore, may still be legible.

  The Coppin Family

  There are quite a few supernatural stories regarding the search for the Franklin ships but my favourite is Weesy Coppin and her family. Her father William (1805–1895), originally from Kinsale, County Cork, was a well-known ship builder, engineer and inventor, having built his first ship, named the City of Derry, in 1839.

  The family lived in a four-storey house, called Ivy House, at 34 Strand Road in Derry, which was sadly demolished in 1994 despite the efforts of the Foyle Civic Trust to save it. Four-year-old Weesy died there on 27 May 1849 from gastric fever and her spirit was seen by her sister Ann and brother William. At some point, the children’s Aunt Harriet suggested that Ann ask Weesy for information on the missing ships in the Arctic – it was the hot topic of the day. As a result, Ann produced an Arctic map that included territory which had yet to be discovered.

  We only know this thanks to a Liverpool vicar, Reverend J Henry Skewes, who published the story forty years later in 1889, in a book about the missing expedition. Of course, plenty of people did not believe a word of it, including Captain Francis McClintock. However, this spurred the reverend to publish his evidence, that is, letters between William Coppin, Lady Franklin and her niece, Sophie Cracroft. According to Reverend Skewes, William Coppin made approximately thirty visits to Lady Franklin to discuss Ann’s map.

  In 1850, Lady Franklin confided in the Admiralty’s Second Secretary, Captain W.A.B. Hamilton, telling him that Mr Coppin had been in touch once more to say that the ship had been ‘seen’ in the same place, surrounded by ice. Only a couple of people knew the true origins of the map, but today, all things considered, the information provided by Weesy has proved to be the most accurate concerning the true locations of the ships.

  Lady Franklin begged the Navy to send out a ship to search the area suggested by the map but they refused. She put together a search of her own, directing the crew of the Prince Albert to go south, on reaching the Arctic, but the ice proved impenetrable, forcing the ship to return home.

  It is the assumption that after Lady Franklin died, Sophie, a devout Christian, destroyed any mention in her aunt’s papers of contacts with the supernatural.

  For my story, I made Ann slightly older. According to most books, she was nine years old at the time of the sightings. Also, I ignored the existence of an older brother, John, who was studying in Trinity College, in Dublin. Mrs Dora Coppin had another baby, after Weesy’s death, a daughter called Harriet, but she died on 11 April 1859 at the age of eighteen months. Mrs Coppin died on 11 September 1866 and her husband William died on 17 April 1895. Both are buried with their family in St Augustine’s graveyard. It does not appear that Ann ever married.

  Beechey Island Bodies

  In 1984, the bodies of John Torrington, John Hartnell and William Braine, buried on Beechey Island in 1846, were exhumed, or dug up, by a team of scientists and archaeologists, including writers John Geiger and Owen Beattie who recorded their experience in their book, Frozen in Time.

  Things to Do

  * Visit Banbridge to see the monument to Captain Francis Crozier and his house that sits across the road.

  * Visit Dundalk Museum to see various items that belonged to Captain Francis McClintock.

  * Visit Westminster Abbey to see the bust of John Franklin and the plaque to Captain McClintock.

  * Visit Dublin’s Natural History Museum to see the musk ox and polar bear that were shot and presented by Captain Francis McClintock.

  * Visit Derry to see the Coppin family grave in St Augustine’s Church.

  * Think about what might have happened had Sir John and Captain Crozier decided, from the very beginning, that their best chance of success in the Arctic lay in learning more about how the Inuit lived and copying them.

  Further Reading

  Alexander, Alison, The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer. Allen & Unwin, 2013.

  Beattie, Owen and Geiger, John, Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. Bloomsbury, 2004.

  Fosset, Renée, In Order to Live Untroubled: Inuit of the Central Arctic, 1550 to 1940. Manitoba Press, 2001.

  Hutchinson, Gillian, Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition Lost and Found. Adlard Coles, 2017.

  Lambert, Andrew, Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation. Faber and Faber, 2009.

  Malley, Annesley and Mc Laughlin, Mary, Captain William Coppin: Neptune’s Brightest Star. Foyle Civic Trust, 1992.

  McCoogan, Ken, Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, The Arctic Hero Time Forgot. Basic Books, 2003.

  Murphy, David, The Arctic Fox: Francis Leopold-McClintock, Discoverer of the Fate of Franklin. Dundurn, 2004.

  Nugent, Frank, Seek the Frozen Lands: Irish Polar Explorers 1740–1922. Collins Press, 2003.

  Palin, Michael, Erebus, The Story of a Ship. Arrow, 2019.

  Watson, Paul, Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition. WW Norton & Company, 2017.

  Woodman, David C., Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015.

  To follow the ongoing excavations of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, check out the excellent blog: www.visionsnorth.blogspot.com.

  About the Author

  Nicola Pierce published her first book for children, Spirit of the Titanic, to rave reviews and five printings within its first twelve months. City of Fate, her second book, transported the reader deep into the Russian city of Stalingrad during World War II. The novel was shortlisted for the Warwickshire School Library Service Award, 2014. Nicola went on to bring seventeenth-century Ireland vividly to life in Behind the Walls (2015), a rich emotional novel set in the besieged city of Derry in 1689, followed by Kings of the Boyne (2016), a moving and gritty account capturing the Battle of the Boyne (1690), which was shortlisted for the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) awards. In 2018 Nicola delved in to the true stories of the passengers, crew and the legacy of the fated ship Titanic, in her illustrated book of the same name. To read more about Nicola, go to her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Nicola Pierce-Author and on Twitter @NicolaPierce3.

  Copyright

  This eBook edition first published 2020 by The O’Brien Press Ltd,

  12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, D06 HD27, Ireland.

  Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777

  E-mail: books@obrien.ie

  Website: www.obrien.ie

  First published 2020 by The O’Brien Press Ltd.

  The O’Brien Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.

  eBook ISBN: 978–1–78849–200–3

  Copyright for text © Nicola Pierce 2020

  Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design © The O’Brien Press Ltd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-publication Data A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Cover image: Jon Berkeley

  Internal illustrations: Eoin O’Brien

  Chasing Ghosts receives financial assistance from the Arts Council

 

 

 
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